Things I've learned so far at SXSW:
Get to panels early.
If you can manage, get there an hour before. Or sleep in the room. It seems that everyone is going to the same talks, and there's not enough seats allocated, so if you're not on top of it you're going to be standing, or not even able to get in the room.
Hint. Not much about work.
I say this from experience, because right now I'm sitting on the floor outside of Malcolm Gladwell's talk. Due to (ahem) circumstances, I'm not feeling up to standing for long periods, so I'm missing out. I presume he's discussing his book though, so if I pick up a copy I won't miss too much.
Gel caplets rock.
No need to go into details, but I'm loving Advil gel caplets. Indispensable. Definitely a required hotel room item, along with a large bottle of water.
Everybody is shorter than I thought
It's like the web adds a foot or so, like they used to say about television adding ten pounds. For some reason everybody I am finally meeting is much shorter than I imagined. Maybe a large web presence creates the illusion of a large physical presence or something, or maybe it's just tough to extrapolate from headshots.
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